The conundrum of the Social Media Revolution

One of the SMS screencasts is on the history of social aspect of communication and the current revolutionary aspect of social media communications. An interesting point raised is that while we tend to think of social media as something very new and contemporary, the truth is that communications among humans have always had a social element to it. In this regard, history repeats itself in the social aspect of the communication, it is just the medium that has changed.

I do agree with this statement. Now let's assume that this statement is a universal truth. If that is the case, then following the rules of Symbolic Logic, one can concur that sum of all assumptions comprising the statement have to be also true in order to make the full statement a universal truth. If any one assumption is declared to be false then it is reasonable to concur that either the universal truth of the statement is no longer valid or that particular assumption does not belong in the statement. Sounds confusing? I will explain with the following conundrum.

There is evidence to suggest that communication, particularly mass communication through whatever medium was always controlled by certain agencies who stood to benefit the most in controlling such information. As onerous as this sounds, it is something very much present today in almost every aspect of our lives. For instance company communications are always checked and clear by senior staff, generally involving someone from media/public relations and legal. Governments engage in controlled dissemination of information so as to not create chaos among the public. Major news corporations are controlled by even larger conglomerates that are again controlled by a few elite individuals who tend to characterise the news coverage based on their personal beliefs and opinions. For instance it is commonly known that Fox, a major US television network whose major shareholders are prominent members of the Republican Party, has a strong conservative bent and appeals to the right wing faction of society. Alternatively, the O network, presumably controlled by the eponymous Oprah Winfrey, tends to have a more liberal bent and appeals to the Democrat Party voter base or the left wing faction.

A more ominous aspect of controlled information is that of governments propaganda such as those done during Nazi occupied Germany, and communist controlled North Korea and China. Another instance of this is the commonly held belief that modern history, as taught in most schools, was written in the context and for benefit of the early imperialist nations since they were the ones who developed and then controlled the printing mediums of that age.

Now getting back to the topic of Social Media revolution, one of the key benefits cited is the democratisation of the information. Since creation and sharing of information is no longer restricted to a few individuals, and is in the hands of the public, the information shared is better for society. However, if we assume the universal truth of the preceding statement that there is nothing new in social media and that it is simply history repeating itself through a different medium, and if it has been historically true that communication has been controlled to benefit the elite, then it stands to reason that eventually, social media will begin to be controlled by the elite and benefit those to whom it stands to benefit. 

If one cannot accept the reasoning for accepting the latter conclusion then one has to discard the former hypothesis behind it as well. 

However, there are early signs to suggest that after the initial euphoria of mass involvement in communication, there seems to be a convergence of control of media through certain elite channels. For instance, the text reading for this module "Social Media Marketing: A strategic Approach" had one case study on the emergence and massive growth of Digg, an online portal of news information. While Digg's model may be based on mass participation behaviour, what is ignored in the case study is the fact that the popularity of an aggregator news site like Digg, means the dissemination of information is being controlled by that one agency notwithstanding the appearance of democratic process in how the information is ranked. Examples abound in other aggregator sites like Mashable, TechCrunch, Vine, Stumbleupon and so many others. These are million dollar (if not billion dollar) valued companies. It can be reasoned that information (or at least how it is gathered and read) is once again being controlled by the elite. Even Google's search bot, notorious for creating the specialised skill of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) of all content published online, is developed by engineers and a very very secret algorithm in how information is found and ranked. So a large organisation with the ability to write SEO content is likely to have it's information found and read more easily than some local blogger sitting in a remote town and dispensing jewels of wisdom.

Indeed, the best term to describe this trend is from another screencast video of this module reading, titled "The Social Media Minefield". A minefield it is! So tread with caution.

-Abi